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[therapeutics]

DOCTOR JULIA HOFFMAN text | video | audio ic inbox for exsilium

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[therapeutics]

Afford to?

[ julia leans in, the most incredulous expression spreading over her face. ]

Where the hell are you from that people need to fight? Sure, we had the draft, but that's only for men. A good portion of people never set foot on a battlefield.

[phaseshifted]

...Do you mind if I ask to sit before I answer that?

[If she's going to divulge where she comes from, she'd like to sit down first.]

[therapeutics]

Uh.

[ eyes darting, slightly, julia takes a step back inside the room. there's not much room in there, mind, but there's another bed. she gestures to it. ]

Sure.

[phaseshifted]

Thank you.

[She takes a seat on the bed, folding her hands on her knees and taking a deep breath.]

The place I come from is a planet that if it was not hostile, desolate, and unforgiving would be under the thumb of a corporation long before now. Its people are much the same, a collection of mercenaries, convicts, company employees, and fortune hunters--I could tell you that the place is a planet of bandits and I wouldn't be lying. People die in fights with each other and the planet herself more times a day than you could count--supplies are treasured, a gun is as common as a coat to have by you, the focus is survival. So, if you don't fight, you die. That simple.

You might write it off as a wasteland that only a fool would live on. Yet Pandora is home. A wretched home, but one nonetheless.

[She would know. She spent those years connected to her heart, eyes everywhere, fighting to keep her alive.]

[therapeutics]

It had to get that way somehow. Tell me about it.

[ she crosses her legs at the ankle and leans forward slightly. psychiatrist mode? on. ]

[phaseshifted]

[Angel tilts her head curiously. Someone actually interested in the history of Pandora? Even on Pandora people didn't automatically want to know.]

I guess if you had to pick a point to start at? You start when the first corporation took a major interest, and that goes to Atlas, over eighty years ago. [Her eyes take on a slightly faraway look as she pulls up her own notes on the events to go off of.] Atlas made the first headways in taking a stab at the myths around Pandora--there was a rumor that somewhere there was a vast store of alien technology somewhere, and Atlas was pretty keen on finding it. Still, even though they didn't find anything, word got around, and that brings in the treasure hunters who want it for personal reasons.

Here's something they didn't expect. They had come in winter. So summer came, and Pandora woke up, and she struck back against those that sought to colonize. Atlas brought in their army of mercenaries to keep their interests safe, and so everyone wasn't totally wiped out. This is when people began to understand just what kind of planet they had come to, and how much she would not be tamed.

Then came Dahl some decades later. They professed they weren't looking for the technology, just the opportunity to mine on Pandora. Atlas left them alone, and Dahl brought in convicts to work as their slaves in mining and processing the various ores. Things were as peaceful as they were ever going to get, until someone from Dahl found something hinting at the technology that had driven Atlas to colonize in the first place. Atlas heard and sent in a massive squad of mercenaries, Dahl fled and left nearly everyone and everything behind, including their workers and their slaves. Disaster inevitably struck the Atlas soldiers in the next few years, and the corporation decided to cut their losses and leave them to rot.

And they never found the technology they were looking for in the first place.

[therapeutics]

[ and at that, julia leans back. yes, she had inquired, but she also hadn't expected anything quite that detailed. ]

And when, in all of this, did you come in?

[phaseshifted]

I was born during the quieter years.

[There is where she draws the line. Anything else-Sirens, what she saw, what she knew-that is hers to keep.]

[therapeutics]

So what was that like? I mean, obviously, there was some commotion you were obviously thrown into.

[phaseshifted]

You asked about the place I came from, not my childhood, Dr. Hoffman.

[Not today. Not ever, if she can help it.]

[therapeutics]

Well. They're interconnected. They always are. It's not that far of a leap.

[ PSYCHIATRY!!!!!!!!!! ]

[phaseshifted]

Would you mind explaining it to me a little more? Maybe, for example, how your world and childhood connect?

[SLAM DUNKS IT INTO YOUR COURT JULIA]

[therapeutics]

That world has circumstances, obviously. It would affect the way you were raised and the environment for you mentally.

[phaseshifted]

Can I have an example?

[therapeutics]

[ no. ]

You know, I really don't think it's that hard of a distinction to make.

[ but nevertheless. she pauses, glaring in the meanwhile, and sighs. ]

I grew up in a very traditional time period in a patriarchal household - a patriarchal society. Therefore, I was made to feel lesser and subservient because I was a girl. As a reaction to that, I made the choice to rebel and utilize my intelligence to become a doctor, which not very many women did in the fifties and sixties.

Does that clear things up?

[phaseshifted]

[...Lesser because she was a girl? That's a value only the really backwards clans hold onto, and even then...it's weird to consider.]

It's good you didn't let them being completely wrong hold you down.

[therapeutics]

Of course they're wrong. But it's the way things were.

[ and still are, at least back in the 70s, but it's getting better. kind of.

and the question's getting spun back around. ]

I take it you don't have problems like that where you're from.

[phaseshifted]

It isn't nonexistent, but it's rare. Women and men alike are seen as equally capable-your skill matters more than your gender ever could. [She smiles, bringing up faces in her mind.] One of my friends-she leads her group of treasure hunters, and no one would question that she's the smartest of them all.

[therapeutics]

It's a case of survival, then. Given your environment, it's every man - or woman - for themselves, leaving little room for distinctions like that.

Interesting.

[phaseshifted]

Mm.

[Casual enough to be tossed off as a random motion, Angel crosses her arms so she can touch her markings. Every woman for herself.]

And you live in a place where people take their relative comfort and use that freedom to be assho-I mean, awful people.

[therapeutics]

It has more to do with religion, than anything. Supposedly, a book written millennia ago and translated by who knows how many people gives people the freedom they need to be assholes. [ nope. just say it. it's all good. ]

[phaseshifted]

[She can nearly feel him over her shoulder, holding it tight, going Language.]

...I'm sorry.

[What else do you say when people are that wrong?]

[therapeutics]

Oh, don't be sorry. Technically, you're a part of it now.

[ LMFAO WELCOME TO ENGLAND??? ]

[phaseshifted]

I am?

[Nah she'll stay with her progressive society thanks]

[therapeutics]

It's technically Earth, isn't it? Very far in the future, but still.